


Quintuple Drabble: When Abel Looked Up At Cain.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Assassins, Comment Fic, Community: fic_promptly, Death penalty, Fratricide, Public executions, Quintuple Drabble, Revenge, Song Lyric Title, Time Period: Execution of Yuri Vorbarra, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra, Time Period: Yuri Vorbarra's Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:58:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Once, dear brother, we were brothers. Don't you remember?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quintuple Drabble: When Abel Looked Up At Cain.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://zdenka.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**zdenka**](http://zdenka.dreamwidth.org/) 's prompt on [](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fic_promptly**](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/) : _Vorkosigan, any,  
>  Now we are come to our Kingdom,  
> And the Crown is ours to take--  
> With a naked sword at the Council board,  
> And under the throne a snake.  
> Now we are come to our Kingdom!  
> (Rudyard Kipling, "The Kingdom)_ as part of Big Fandoms day in the Contest Week.
> 
> * * *
> 
> The title is from "Tranquilize" by The Killers.

The war has felt like an eternity. Both wars did, in their own ways, but Xav, when he thinks to those days before, feels like he is stretching aching fingers back into a bucket of ice water. The pain remains for days after, low and cold, with the bitter aftertaste of his numbed rage coloring every moment. And now the war is over and still the pain remains.

Today, Yuri is going to die.

"Summary court martial," Ezar had offered, but Xav had refused to entertain the notion, for all that Yuri had once been a general, too. Piotr's suggestions for coating this in legalities had been little better, and Xav had rejected them all.

There is nothing to erase the fact that they are paying back twenty assassinations with an assassination by twenty men. That's how it should be.

Xav stands on the parapet and looks up at the sky and thinks, banally, there's a storm coming through, and he remembers one day, back before even the Cetagandans, when his older brother had chased him out into the courtyard of the Residence and tackled him and they had rolled around in the dirt and when Yuri had tired of the game, Xav had managed to get a good punch in and bloodied Yuri's nose. It hadn't felt particularly good. He remembers that more than he remembers how it felt when Yuri had returned the blow.

Xav wonders if he should try to be remembering the good times. If this is what mercy is meant to feel like. An appeal to emotion, an appeal to the past. _Once, dear brother, we were brothers. Don't you remember?_

"And where was that mercy," Xav asks the ghost of his still-living brother, "when you killed them all?"

But perhaps this is how it's supposed to be. Not mercy, no. Not understanding. Never that. But... an acceptance. Xav chose this, and chooses this, but Yuri did, too. If he chooses to mourn his brother, he is mourning the memory of someone who hasn't existed in a long time.

Or maybe it would be simply mourning his own delusions, and the loss of them. And at such a price.

This is Barrayar's price for peace, Xav had argued in the war council over what to do with the deposed Emperor. Make it public. Make it bloody. Make it worse than what they did to the Usurper, worse than Vorgorgerin's quartering, worse than what even Piotr thinks is acceptable. They will remember this one.

They will remember Xav and Ezar and Piotr, and more, they will remember the children. They will remember what Yuri sacrificed on the altar of his paranoia, and they will remember what price he paid. They will remember. Xav will create a horror great enough that they will never forget.

If there is only one lesson Xav ever learned from his brother, it's that. Choose your terrors carefully. They'll remember you for them.

And the price paid?

Xav will live with it.


End file.
